SAN DIEGO – The transfer of playing wealth from the American League East to the National League West is palpable, says veteran San Diego Padres outfielder Jason Heyward, who offered an acute analysis of the issue.
An argument can be made that the NL West, with its investment this season of $1.25 billion in players and MLB-best four teams with a winning record entering Friday, is the best division in the sport.
“That’s fair,” Heyward said Tuesday night after his return from the injured list amid left knee soreness in the Padres’ 7-4 victory over the division rival San Francisco Giants at jam-packed Petco Park. “From the amount of money spent investing in the teams to the amount of guys who’ve played in postseason baseball, it’s pretty top heavy.”
The reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers lead the league with $400.5 million invested in players for luxury tax purposes, but even the 6-25 Colorado Rockies have spent a 21st-in-MLB $145 million. The Padres, Giants and Arizona Diamondbacks have collectively spent $703.2 million trying to keep up with the Dodgers.
It’s created a highly competitive environment with the Dodgers, Padres and Giants each already having at least 19 wins.
“It’s probably the strongest I’ve seen this division in a while,” said Giants starter Robbie Ray, who also has pitched for the D-backs.
To Heyward’s point, the Padres have Manny Machado from the Baltimore Orioles, Nick Pivetta and Xander Bogaerts from the Boston Red Sox and Michael King from the New York Yankees. The Dodgers have Mookie Betts from the Red Sox. The D-backs have Corbin Burnes from the Orioles. The Giants have Willy Adames, who played for Tampa Bay’s 2020 World Series participants.
That’s a transfer of $1.45 billion from the AL East to the NL West in long-term financial obligations via either trades or free-agent signings. And that’s just a sampling.
“It’s having seasoned vets mixing in with some up-and-coming young guys,” said Heyward, who played for the Chicago Cubs in 2016 when they won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. “That’s the route you have to take. It’s about the character you build on the club, too.”
The AL East is still highly competitive, make no mistake about it, with the Yankees leading the AL in spending at $312.1 million, third in MLB behind the Dodgers and crosstown Mets, the latter of which is at $329.8 million.
Toronto ($267.5 million) and Boston ($247.7 million) are not that far behind the Yanks, with the division as a whole spending a total of $1.1 billion. Tampa Bay is 29th in baseball at $102.9 million.
“You have to spend money to make money,” Heyward said, noting that the seven highest spending teams across the NL West and AL East are among MLB’s top teams thus far this season in attendance and are all highly competitive.
The Padres, who opened 12-0 at home and are 14-4 there after sweeping the Giants in a two-game series, have sold out 15 of their first 18 games at Petco. They drew 47,345 on Tuesday for the umpteenth Tony Gwynn bobblehead night—the gift that keeps on giving—the second-largest crowd in the history of a ballpark that opened in 2004 but has yet to host a World Series game.
It was the first time all season either the Giants or Padres had played one of their top division rivals as April turned into May.
“It’s crazy,” Bob Melvin, in his second season managing the Giants, said. “Usually, the first month of the season there’s a ton of divisional stuff. It’s weird, but it is what it is. The Padres are a good team off to a great start.”
San Diego has been to the World Series twice since expanding into the NL in 1969, but it lost on both occasions—to the Detroit Tigers in 1984 and the Yankees in 1998. The franchise is 1-8 in Fall Classic competition, with all the home games having been played in its original facility—Jack Murphy/Qualcomm Stadium, a multi-purpose edifice in Mission Valley.
This is the fourth season since the Seidler family began pouring money into the team. With the investment into star players and the goal of winning it all, Padres fans have bought in. And despite chaos in ownership since Peter Seidler died after the 2023 season, the spending continues.
Home attendance has risen from 2.1 million in 2017 to a club-record 3.3 million last season when revenue was $448 million, according to Sportico’s MLB valuations. The Padres’ total value is $2.31 million, way up from the $800 million the Seidlers paid John Moores when they purchased the club in 2012.
After missing the playoffs 13 years in a row, the Padres have been to the expanded postseason three times in the past five years. Petco Park has become a destination ballpark.
Melvin, surveying it from the third base side visitor’s dugout pregame on Tuesday night, said, “it’s San Diego, you can’t get any better than this.”
Melvin managed the Padres for two seasons in 2022 and 2023 before moving on to the re-tooling Giants. His 2022 club suffered a five-game NL Championship Series loss to the Philadelphia Phillies, as deep as the Padres have gone in the playoffs since the 1998 World Series.
The current club is replete with players that have either won or gone to the Fall Classic elsewhere—Bogaerts, Machado, Heyward and Yu Darvish.
“Their body of work speaks for itself,” current manager Mike Shildt said after the Wednesday win. “But we don’t take anything for granted. We know who we are and how we play. This game is challenging.”
The overall challenge will be surviving the NL West.
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